Saving the Bay

Nicole Rohr should teach a master class in time management. In addition to her busy life as a law student, the 3L holds a full-time position as assistant director of the Coastal Institute in Narragansett, R.I., while also serving as chair of the Rhode Island Environmental Monitoring Collaborative, and as science advisor to the Napatree Conservation Area in Watch Hill, R.I.

 With a Ph.D. in biological science, this former Knauss Fellow and Capitol Hill legislative assistant is also an assistant research professor at the University of Rhode Island. Asked about the current state of Narragansett Bay, Rohr ventured:

“The southern part of Narragansett Bay is pretty healthy; the upper Bay is getting better. In Providence, industrial contaminants in the sediment are a problem; in other communities, it’s septic tank and cesspool runoff. Either way, these days it’s often an issue of too much nitrogen getting into the Bay – which causes algae, which causes low oxygen, which causes fish kills and so on. But the biggest upcoming threat to the Bay is climate change – more storms, rising sea levels; a lot of communities will be dealing with these issues a lot more frequently.”